First Door on the Left

Howard Dean has gotten himself into a paint brawl.

The Democratic presidential hopeful is drawing heat from City Hall after appearing in front of a graffiti-covered backdrop during a rally at Bryant Park on Tuesday.

“It’s unfortunate that Mr. Dean would promote and romanticize a form of vandalism, especially considering this city’s success in eliminating this urban blight,” said Bloomberg’s press secretary Ed Skyler.

The backdrop, spray-painted by Brooklyn “aerosol artist” KEO, was commissioned by Dean’s campaign. Dean’s staff said they placed no restrictions when commissioning the piece.

Councilman James Oddo, a Staten Island Republican, says the backdrop is an insulting token of bygone 1970s New York.

“We have a pandering politician come in here and basically say to the country that what best symbolizes New York is graffiti and urban decay,” Oddo said.

Dean, the former Vermont governor and a native New Yorker who left the city in 1978, was simply making the point that he’s in touch with inner-city youth, according to his people.

“Urban American youth are among those who have the most to lose from another four years of George W. Bush,” said Dean’s New York spokesman, Eric Schmeltzer, reading from a written statement. “Howard Dean … afforded the opportunity to an artist loved and respected by many of them to express himself in a creative and constructive way.”

This is pure nit-picking, further proof that the Republican party is growing increasingly desperate. I hope that after Dr. Dean becomes President Dean, he will take that painting and hang it in the lobby of the White House.

WASHINGTON — President Bush’s campaign — expected to dwarf Democratic hopefuls by raising $200 million or more for the primaries, with no GOP rival — is appealing for donations by portraying Bush as a fund-raising underdog who won’t have enough cash to defend himself against Democratic attacks.

“Democrats and their allies will have more money to spend attacking the president during the nomination battle than we will have to defend him,” campaign Chairman Marc Racicot wrote in the fund-raising e-mail, sent Wednesday night. “If you need more convincing the president needs your help, consider what the Democrats are saying. The race is just starting, but their rhetoric is already red-hot.”

Bush has set several fund-raising records, including the most collected for a presidential primary and the most raised at a single event.

Racicot’s e-mail attributes quotes to several Democratic presidential hopefuls criticizing Bush.

Among them, Racicot says former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean stated that Bush might suspend the 2004 election, called Bush “reckless” and “despicable,” compared him to the Taliban and said Bush was trying to destroy Social Security, Medicare, public schools and public services.

“This ugly, overheated rhetoric shows Democrats will say anything and stop at nothing to defeat this president,” Racicot wrote.

Asked if the comments attributed to Dean were accurate, Dean spokeswoman Tricia Enright was incredulous.

“Compared him to the Taliban? Absolutely not. Suspend the 2004 election? What is that about?” Enright asked. “He said his [Bush's] tax policies were reckless. Obviously all this was taken out of context.”

Enright said it was surprising that “a guy who has portrayed himself as the fund-raising Superman” was now describing himself as an underdog.

What we are witnessing here are the last gasps of a failed and dying administration.

“Democrats will say anything and stop at nothing to defeat this president.” Now, let us amend that sentence to make it true: “The radical right-wing Republicans will say anything and stop at nothing to defend this president.”

George W. Bush is in trouble, and he knows it. So does Karl Rove. We are still very early in the primary season, and already the lies and innuendoes are starting. While it is true that Bush & Co. are trying to destroy Social Security, Medicare, public schools and public services, I have never once heard Dr. Dean compare them to the Taliban, however valid such a comparison may be.

WASHINGTON — U.S. diplomats said Thursday that they are making little or no progress in their push for a United Nations resolution that would persuade reluctant allies to commit new peacekeeping troops to Iraq.

The diplomats have floated various ideas to jump-start the moribund talks at the United Nations, including the possibility of turning over Iraq peacekeeping duties to a multinational force that would be headed by a U.S. general.

But the countries that can provide the tens of thousands of troops the Bush administration is seeking continue to demand a shift in U.S. policy that would give the United Nations wide authority over political, military and humanitarian issues in Iraq. There is no sign the Bush administration would agree to that, and negotiations appear to be stalemated.

Okay, world, what’s up with this? Just because we completely snubbed you and went and started a war that none of you agreed with, which we have now made a complete mess of and have no idea how we’re going to get out of. C’mon now, let’s let bygones be bygones, shall we? We’re spending a billion dollars a week here, to say nothing of the fact that our kids are dying at the rate of about ten or so a week. Seems the least you could do would be to send us some of your money and troops, and since we’ve proven we’ve really got a handle on the situtation here, you should let us be in complete control of your money and troops. After all, we’re all in this together, right?

Wrong.

Will the Bushies ever get a clue?

BURLINGTON, VT (8/28/03)–Following his appearance at last weekend’s commemorative march on the National Mall, Democratic presidential candidate Governor Howard Dean, M.D., issued this statement today on the 40th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington:

“Forty years ago today, a quarter of a million Americans peacefully protested the nation’s unjust segregationist policies. Those patriots of all races and from all walks of life joined together on the Washington Mall to change their country and fight for basic civil rights and equal rights for all Americans. They listened as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., outlined his vision for an America where people were judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.

“Today, Dr. King’s dream is being attacked by an administration that seeks to unravel the decades of improvements made on civil rights and gaining equal rights for all Americans. Our civil liberties are under assault, our moral role in the world has been compromised, and we’ve seen progress on issues like the civil rights and the environment reversed by an administration that seeks to divide us once again by race, gender, sexual orientation, and income. Just as those 1963 marchers changed the course of the country, we must today take another stand to set right the course of American society. We can take our country back, and, as Dr. King said, we must let freedom ring.”

by Bob Herbert

He was going to be the education president, and during the campaign in 2000 he hugged kids from coast to coast, crowing about the education miracle in Texas and promising to spread the Texas model nationwide.

He said he was a different kind of Republican, a man of honor and compassion who would look out for the kids.

It was all smoke, of course — photo-ops in a cynical campaign. You knew it was smoke when the “compassionate” George W. Bush put Dick Cheney on the ticket, a former congressman who had voted against funding for Head Start, against subsidizing school lunches and against federal aid for college students.

In other words, against kids.

Next week the Senate will take up the education budget proposed for next year by the White House and Senate Republicans. From the perspective of those who are pro-children, it’s loaded with bad news. Not only does the bill fall far short of the photo-op promises Mr. Bush made to provide funding for programs to improve public education, but it would actually cut $200 million from the president’s very own (and relentlessly touted) No Child Left Behind Act.

We’re talking about a real cut — $200 million less than is being spent on this already underfunded initiative.

The proposed cuts, according to Congressional officials who have studied the budget proposal, would eliminate a high school dropout prevention program, would prevent more than 32,000 children with limited proficiency in English from participating in federally supported English instruction programs, would drastically cut high school equivalency and college assistance for migrant children, and would end the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship program.

The proposal would also cut more than 20,000 teachers from professional training programs, despite Mr. Bush’s promise that teachers would “get the training they need to raise educational standards.” And it would completely eliminate training for teachers in computer technology.

Among those who are steaming over the proposal is Senator Edward Kennedy, one of a number of Democrats who gave the president the kind of good-faith, high-profile, bipartisan support that was crucial to the passage of No Child Left Behind.

Here is what Senator Kennedy will say on the Senate floor next week:

“The bill before us contains harsh and unacceptable cuts to education that will hurt families, students, schools and teachers throughout the country. The president and Congress promised to reform and improve public education . . . but if we pass the legislation before us as is, the message again to parents and teachers and schools will be, `You’re on your own.’ ”

Senator Kennedy also plans to stress that the president is prone to making promises that are never kept: “A pattern is emerging. Each year the president picks a large area to work in a bipartisan fashion and promise compassion and help. In the past that area has been education. This year, it is the global AIDS crisis, and we hope that the promised support will happen. But on education, the promises made consistently have been broken.”

It’s hard to believe the president ever intended to adequately fund the No Child Left Behind Act. Mr. Bush fights ferociously for the things he really cares about: enormous tax cuts for the wealthy, for example, or launching a war against Iraq. He has never showed a similar passion for improving the public schools. The administration tried to cut funding for the No Child Left Behind Act less than two weeks after the president signed it into law.

The tax cuts and the ever-increasing costs of the war are submerging the nation in a sea of red ink, and the hopes of millions of school-age youngsters are sinking right along with it.

As for the Texas education miracle — more smoke. The largest and most frequently praised district, Houston, is being monitored by the state after an audit showed that more than half of the 5,500 students who left school in the 2000-2001 year should have been counted as dropouts, but were not.

President Bush was apparently serious about bringing the Texas model to the nation. He made the superintendent of the Houston school district the nation’s education secretary.

In the end 9-11 turned out to be a made-for-TV movie, or rather, the basis for one—a shameless propaganda vehicle for our superstar president George W. Bush.

The upcoming Showtime feature DC 9/11: Time of Crisis is a signal advance in the instant, ongoing fictionalization of American history, complete with the president fulminating most presidentially against “tinhorn terrorists,” decisively employing the word problematic in a complete sentence, selling a rationale for preemptive war, and presciently laying out American foreign policy for the next 18 months. “We start with bin Laden,” Bush (played by Timothy Bottoms) tells his cabinet. “That’s what the American people expect. . . . So let’s build a coalition for that job. Later, we can shape different coalitions for different tasks.”

Scheduled for cablecast on September 7, DC 9/11 inaugurates Bush’s re-election campaign 50 weeks before the 9-11 Memorial Republican National Convention opens in Madison Square Garden. DC 9/11 also marks a new stage in the American cult of personality: the actual president as fictional protagonist.

Before you watch this movie (if you watch this movie), I would recommend you reaquaint yourself with what actually happened that day. The full timeline is recorded here.

The Village Voice article concludes…

Ultimately, DC 9/11 is less a docudramatic account of historical events than a legitimizing allegory. In glamorizing a living president, it is an opportunistic piece of political mythmaking—a scenario that effectively bridges the highly irregular maneuvering that brought a popular-vote loser to power in 2000 and the exaggerated, even fabricated, claims with which his regime orchestrated the U.S. invasion of Iraq

Bush’s approval rating was hovering around 50 percent on the morning of September 11. Indeed, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have done so much for Bush’s presidency one might reasonably suspect they’re being held in a witness protection program. If the Iraq war is integral to America’s transformation from republic to empire, then DC 9/11 is part of the process, described by Mark Crispin Miller as Bush’s “incarnation as America’s Augustus.”

Several incidents in the Iraq war—the semi-fictional Saving Private Lynch saga, the made-for-TV toppling of Hussein’s statue, the outrageous Top Gun photo op with which Bush announced victory—are ready to be excerpted in Republican Party 2004 campaign propaganda. DC 9/11 is that propaganda: The “Battle Hymn of the Republic” swells as Bush flies into ground zero, where he astonishes even Rove (Allan Royal) by spontaneously vaulting a police barricade to hop on the rubble and grab the microphone. A nearby fireman, compelled to tell the president that he didn’t vote for him, swears allegiance, mandating Bush to “find the son of a bitch who did this.” Once Bush realizes that “today, the president has to be the country,” Rove considers the image problem solved. Bush, he explains, has become commander in chief and taken back “control of his destiny.” The climax is Bush’s televised, prime-time September 20 speech—a montage of highly charged 9-11 footage that ends with the real-life, now fully authenticated Bush accepting the adulation of Congress as he fingers the talismanic shield worn by a fallen New York police officer.

As long as there are parents and children in this world, people will yearn for the illusion of a wise, selfless, divinely inspired leader. As expressed in DC 9/11, this desire is far less complex than the bizarre wish-fulfillment provided by The West Wing—unless a political miracle occurs and that fantasy materializes with the election of Howard Dean. Both these presidential soap operas offer utopian visions of political leadership. But unlike The West Wing, DC 9/11 gumps a fictionalized hero into real catastrophe to create the myth of a defining moment, and stake its claim on historical truth.

By Jim Kessler

WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 (UPI) — Love him or hate him, call him the savior of the Democratic Party or its ruination, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is poised to win his party’s presidential nomination.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not because Dean is one of the most liberal candidates in a party that seems to be careening to the left. It is because Dean has captured the five elusive attributes a candidate needs to be successful in an election — none of which have anything to do with ideology.

The first is believability. Does the candidate have a message that he truly believes in? When the candidate speaks do people feel that it comes from the heart or do their baloney meters spike into the red zone? In the last election, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., cornered the market on believability and voters embraced his “straight talk.” On the other hand, voters felt that former Vice President Al Gore was continuously searching for the right words to appeal to them. He seemed like a politician — a dirty word to most voters.

Whatever people feel about Howard Dean’s views, they do believe they are his own.

Does the candidate enjoy giving his message? “Enjoyment” is not an attribute that political pundits generally point to as critical, but it should not be discounted. Enjoyment is a proxy for passion. When the candidate delivers his message to voters, does it inspire? If so, then a candidate is more likely to attract highly committed voters — a necessity in a crowded primary where the allegiances of voters shift from candidate to candidate. In the 1992 Republican primary, Steve Forbes had a popular message (remember the flat tax?), but he delivered it with the demeanor of an undertaker. Voters drifted away. Like Bill Clinton, Howard Dean loves to campaign and it shows with the enthusiastic response he gets from voters.

Next, are the campaign’s resources sufficient to get the message out?

In 1996, Pat Buchanan had a powerful conservative message and campaigned with the moxie of a Hollywood gunslinger. But he had no money and couldn’t transmit his message beyond those who saw him in person or on the news. Resources may not be a factor for Dean. He raised more money than any other Democratic primary candidate during the months of April through June.

Is there a prevailing current of voter sentiment that a candidate can seize upon to gain momentum? Ross Perot found it in 1992 when he used the federal budget deficit to tap into voter discontent over ineffective government and the failing economy.

In 2003, Howard Dean found it in the anger of Democratic primary voters. They are still angry about hanging chads in Florida, the war in Iraq, and corporate scandals like Enron.

Dean is the only top-tier candidate to explicitly tap into voter anger. He is the anti-Bush candidate, which is appealing to many Democratic voters still seething about an election they believe was stolen from them in 2000. The rest of the leading candidates have moved on, but many of the voters — and Howard Dean — have not.

Is there a new campaign technology that can tip the balance in favor of an enterprising candidate? Just as in business, innovation in politics portends success. Richard Nixon in 1968 was the first candidate to hire Madison Avenue ad men and Hollywood television producers to totally remake his image through television ads.

The new technology today is the Internet. Every candidate has a Web site but only Dean has a full-fledged Internet presence. He is the darling of moveon.org, one of the most effective of the many internet grassroots organizations. He has found an untapped source of voters and donors that no other candidate will have.

The debate in Democratic circles centers around what the success of the liberal Dean candidacy means for the party. Many believe that a Dean victory next August means a Bush landslide in November. That may be, but they are missing the real lesson. It’s not about left, center or right. Taken together, these five attributes – believing in what you’re saying, saying it with passion, raising the money to get the word out, tapping into the undercurrent of public opinion, and reaching new voters through new technology – add up to the central quality that voters are looking for in a candidate: Leadership.

– Jim Kessler is President of the Washington-based consulting firm Definition Strategies and is not affiliated with any of the candidates in the Democratic presidential primary.

The Sleepless Summer Tour is over, but the campaign is really only just beginning!

Over the four days of the tour, 17,717 Americans donated $1,032,903.94 to the campaign; an average of $58.30 per gift. That’s amazing, especially for a hot weekend in August when most people are winding up summer vacations and are busy getting kids back in school. It proves that there are a lot of Americans who are really serious about wanting their country back.

I’ve only seen one estimate on the attendance figure for the rally in New York City tonight, and that was 8,000. I’m sure we’ll hear more tomorrow.

Remember, this thing isn’t over yet. You can still contribute, sign up for e-mail updates from the campaign or for meet-ups. You can do all that through the links in the left column.

An estimated 3,500 people rallied for Governor Dean at Navy Pier in Chicago today. Then, the news broke…

CHICAGO, Aug 26 (Reuters) – Howard Dean’s insurgent campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday raised the bar for third-quarter fund raising to $10.3 million and announced it would run television ads in six states starting this week.

Momentum and a surprise windfall of $7.6 million in April, May and June have forced the former Vermont governor’s one-time small-budget operation to move into higher gear. Recent polls show Dean leading in Iowa and New Hampshire, sites of the 2004 election’s first caucus and primary votes in January.

“Based on what’s coming in at events and online, we now believe we’re on pace to set a goal of $10.3 million,” campaign manager Joe Trippi told reporters at the second-to-last stop on a four-day, 10-city tour.

He said the last Democrat to raise that much in a single quarter in an off year was Bill Clinton in 1995, when he was president.

Dean took in more money in the second quarter than any of his eight Democratic rivals, including more established candidates like Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri.

Dean’s fund-raising prowess has raised questions about whether he would reject federal funds — and the spending limits that go with them — during the primary season as President George W. Bush has decided to do. Trippi said a decision had not been made yet.

Trippi said the campaign would begin running television spots in selected markets in Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington state and Wisconsin on Friday. He expected the cost to be about $1 million.

We still have a ways to go in order to reach the $1 million mark before the governor takes the stage in New York City tonight, so toss in a few bucks if you can. It’s going to a good cause… we’re taking our country back from that ideological bunch of neocons who are running it now.

Remember, the New York rally will be carried live on CSPAN2 at 9:30 ET tonight. At least, that’s what I’ve been told. Check your local listings. If you have not yet heard Dr. Dean speak or seen the excitement he can pull from a crowd, you really owe it to yourself to do so.

Howard Dean plays a harmonica for a supporter and a group of friends listening by cell phone on a bus in New Braunfels, Tex.

CHICAGO, Aug. 26 — Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont whose long-shot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination has surged to the top of several recent polls, plans to broadcast a new television commercial in six states beginning Friday and expects to raise $10.3 million during the second quarter, his campaign announced today.

It is an audacious move, coming five months before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary that begin the balloting, and just after a spring quarter in which the Dean campaign shocked the political establishment by raising more than his eight Democratic rivals — $7.6 million — much of it in small donations sent over the Internet.

Joe Trippi, Dr. Dean’s campaign manager, said the goal was to match the highest amount ever raised by a Democrat in three months during a year without an election. That amount was raised by Bill Clinton as the incumbent president in 1995.

“Running for president of the United States is a marathon,” Mr. Trippi said as Dr. Dean and the campaign’s senior staff flew here from San Antonio, Tex., on the last day of a four-day, 10-city national tour. “We decided we were going to run the first four miles at a 100-yard dash pace. We decided we’re going to run the second four miles at a 100-yard dash pace.”

The announcement came after three days in which Dr. Dean has drawn enormous crowds across the country, particularly considering the season. About 4,000 turned out in Falls Church, Va., a Washington suburb, to kick-off the so-called “Sleepless Summer” tour on Saturday evening, 300 greeted the aging Boeing 737 dubbed the “Grassroots Express” on the tarmac for a brief stop in Boise, Idaho, Sunday morning, 10,000 packed a downtown park in Seattle Sunday night, and about 1,200 rallied boisterously Monday in San Antonio, Tex.

Here in Chicago, Dr. Dean plans to speak at the convention of the Communication Workers of America, then stage what has become a now-familiar mass rally, this time on Navy Pier, before heading to Manhattan for an event in Bryant Park.

While on the road, the campaign has been relentlessly appealing to its Internet supporters, raising more than $700,000 from 11,000 people over three days. That, coupled with success at $100-to-$1,000-a-plate fund-raisers on the ground, convinced the campaign it could top the $10 million mark by the end of September.

The campaign’s financial goal was reported today in USA Today.

Mr. Trippi said he expected the television advertising to cost about $1 million as the commercial is placed in selected markets in six states: Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington and Wisconsin.

Dr. Dean has already run advertisements in Iowa, New Hampshire and Austin, Tex., where he raised nearly $50,000 at a raucous coffeehouse party on Monday afternoon. “We’re going to be in nine states in August,” said Steve McMahon, one of his media consultants. “It’s unprecedented. It’s never even been contemplated.”

While most of the other nine Democrats in the field are concentration resources only in the earliest-voting states, the Dean campaign, which already has paid staff on the ground in 12 states, has acted this week as though the general election is just around the corner.

“We are a 50-state campaign,” Mr. Trippi said. “This is going to happen really fast. This is going to be the most compressed primary cycle in history.”

The campaign’s media consultants, who have been traveling with Dr. Dean all week, plan to shoot the commercial on Wednesday. The advertisement will feature Dr. Dean talking directly into the camera with a straightforward appeal to join his team, because “it’s time to stand up to George Bush.”

Using language from the stump speech that has been jazzing crowds across the country, he will point out his opposition to the war in Iraq and the recent tax cuts, and promise universal health insurance and a jobs-creating economy.

“I opposed the war with Iraq, when too many Democrats supported it, because I want a foreign policy consistent with American values,” the script says. “As governor, I created jobs, balanced budgets and made sure every child in my state had health insurance. As president I’ll make sure every American does too.

“Visit my Web site, join my campaign,” he will say, with the Web address and toll-free number displayed prominently on screen. “Together we can take our country back.”

Mr. Trippi also announced this morning that the campaign would ask 700 supporters who live in Texas — “people who know George Bush the best” — to spend part of September canvassing voters in Iowa.

Live webcast of the Chicago rally is available here (now 11:45 a.m. CT). (RealOne player required.)